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Chapter 646 Different Time Points
Chapter 646 Different Time Points
Within the barrier, Vera, clutching the picture frame that carried false hope, was encouraged by the old woman's soul imprint as she walked step by step toward the singularity core, which was churning with purplish-black vortexes, toward the dead end leading to the abyss of dreams.
Their figures appeared small yet resolute in the distorted space-time, like moths drawn to a candle flame.
Outside the barrier, Chang Lei's breathing was heavy, like that of a broken bellows.
His tattered white tuxedo fluttered in the aftershocks of chaotic energy, and beneath his exposed skin, dark red energy patterns undulated and flickered like restless lava.
Those bloodshot eyes stared intently at the mother's kind smile in the photo, then abruptly turned to Vera's disappearing figure. A soul-wrenching panic and violence almost broke through the dam of reason once again.
"My mom is indeed in that godforsaken place." Chang Lei's voice was hoarse, filled with an almost suffocating pain.
He had long suspected that his mother was lost in the dream world, but he had never found any clues. Now, although he could hardly believe that his mother had come to the wasteland world, it turned out that they had gone to the dream world after wandering around.
Chang Lei abruptly turned to Tang Zijun, his bloodshot eyes burning with a reckless rage. "I want to go back, back to the dream world, now! Immediately! The War of the Gods... Heaven knows what she'll face. She's just a remnant soul, trapped in that damned picture frame!"
The dream world is currently a battlefield of chaos, with gods from different eras clashing and time and space collapsing, laws distorted, and even powerful gods and demons falling like grass.
A mother as fragile as herself, once she fell into that meat grinder-like battlefield, her fate was almost predictable: she would be instantly torn apart by the aftershocks of war, or corrupted and distorted by the madness that permeated the battlefield, becoming some kind of pathetic appendage.
Tang Zijun's hand, like an iron clamp, pressed heavily on Chang Lei's shoulder again, forcefully suppressing the boiling, surging greed within him. "Calm down, Lao Chang!"
"What you are seeing is footage from the past. This history may have occurred a few days ago, a few months ago, or even... further back. The moment Vera is 'traveling' while holding the photo frame, in the real timeline, may have already become dust in history."
"I don't care how long ago that was!" Chang Lei roared, trying to break free from Tang Zijun's grip. "As long as there's a glimmer of hope! Mother might still be..."
"Where might it be?" Tang Zijun interrupted him. "The dream world is vast and boundless, and its spacetime structure is even more chaotic during the War of the Gods. It is not a fixed continent, but an abyss piled up with countless broken consciousnesses, distorted rules, and the echoes of the divine war. There are no coordinates, no clues. If you go in, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. You might even crash into the core of a dying divine realm and instantly turn into dust."
"A clue?!" Chang Lei's bloodshot eyes lit up, as if he had grasped a lifeline. "A clue! Suolin's head! We found it in the dream world! Near Black City! That thing was the core item for their time travel; its initial landing point must not be far from where their mother and the others fell! As long as we find that initial landing point, we can follow the remaining traces of time and space..."
His speech quickened, and his eyes gleamed with an almost fanatical hope.
Tang Zijun fell silent, her brows furrowed.
Chang Lei's logic is not without merit. As the coordinates and carriers for the time travel, when Suolin's mechanical core fails to travel and falls into the dream world, its initial landing point may indeed leave special spacetime imprints or energy residues, which can become important clues for reverse tracking.
But the problem is...
Tang Zijun's voice carried a heavy sense of reality. "Our activity range in the dream world is almost entirely confined to the relatively stable buffer zone of Black City and its surroundings. That's already a safe zone where we've barely managed to gain a foothold in that world. And the location where Suolin's head was found..."
He paused, his expression grave. "We can't be absolutely certain right now. What we can be certain of is that the head was stolen from the ruins of a nobleman's castle..."
He didn't finish speaking, but his meaning was crystal clear.
The dream world, especially the areas far from the stable Black City, is a true forbidden zone for life.
That place is the edge of the battlefield where the wills of the gods collide directly, a chaotic zone where rules have collapsed, a breeding ground for madness and distortion. Spacetime storms are commonplace, and the boundary between reality and fantasy is completely blurred. One second you may be standing on solid ground, and the next you may fall into a boiling furnace of consciousness, or be crushed into the most basic particles by the aftershocks of the will of some passing god.
The most critical problem is that they still cannot determine exactly how many areas the fighting has spread to.
Looking at Tang Zijun's solemn expression and sensing the unspoken meaning in his words, Chang Lei felt as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head.
The fervent flame in his eyes dimmed slightly, replaced by a deeper pain and helplessness. He understood Tang Zijun's concerns, which were by no means alarmist. To find a point in time and space that might have already vanished on the vast battlefield of the gods' war was no different from searching for a specific grain of sand in a boiling pot of oil.
He looked down at his tightly clenched fist, his knuckles white, and beneath the tattered fabric of his tuxedo, dark red energy patterns flickered unwillingly.
On one side was his mother's only chance of survival, and on the other was a near-certain death. Reason and emotion were tearing him apart.
Tang Zijun watched Chang Lei struggle in pain, then turned her gaze back to the barrier.
Vera's figure had almost completely merged into that purplish-black vortex singularity, leaving only a blurry outline and the ominous glowing photo frame in her arms.
"And didn't you notice the problem? Think back, when did we find Zolin's head?"
That was the first time I went to the front line of the river basin, and when did the surveillance cameras here capture the image of that girl?
A few days ago.
"Even if we arrived a little late, and even if the time in the two worlds is out of sync, it would still be no more than half a month. But look here, do you see the point in time they traveled through?"
"Time and space here are in complete chaos. Your mother and that girl have probably traveled directly to the past of the dream world, or worse, they were separated when they crossed that rift."
"The most urgent task at hand," Tang Zijun's voice was low and firm. "is to deal with the 'door' in front of us, stop more transmigrators from being sent in, and figure out the nature of this rift and that singularity. Otherwise, even if we find your mother's whereabouts, this thing that keeps devouring and growing will inevitably become a greater source of disaster, completely destroying the balance between the wasteland world and the dream world."
Chang Lei's chest heaved violently a few times. Beneath his tattered tailcoat, the dark red energy patterns flickered unwillingly a few times before finally settling down slowly like the receding tide.
He slowly raised his head, his face still taut beneath the mask, but the surging madness and reckless impulse in his burning blood-red eyes were ultimately forced back into the abyss by a deeper, colder rationality.
His gaze swept over Vera and the photo frame bearing the imprint of his mother's soul within the barrier, which had completely disappeared into the depths of the churning purplish-black vortex, leaving only a chilling stillness, as if the ecstatic journey he had just experienced had never happened.
Or perhaps it was just a blood-stained silhouette cast by history, long since frozen in time.
"Hoo..." A long, heavy sigh, as if all his strength had been exhausted, slowly escaped from deep in Chang Lei's throat.
That sigh contained so much.
He slowly turned his head to look at Tang Zijun, without saying a word, but nodded very slowly and with great solemnity.
"You're right." Chang Lei's voice was terribly hoarse, each word like sandpaper being scraped. "If this gate to hell isn't closed, even more transmigrators will appear..."
His bloodshot eyes swept across the still boiling, tearing spatial turbulence around him, as well as the twisted creations devouring each other and the endlessly looping afterimages of pain in the distance. "The rules of the two worlds are corrupting and rotting each other. The deathly stillness of the wasteland is seeping into the madness of the dream, and the distortion of the dream is corroding the foundation of the wasteland. The longer it drags on, the faster and more gruesome the deaths of the two worlds will be."
With a cold and unpleasant smile, Chang Lei said quietly.
"At that point, forget about finding someone; the very concept of 'finding' will likely be swallowed up by this mushy stew."
.
He no longer looked at the singularity that had swallowed the past. The tattered white tuxedo fluttered without wind, but this time, it was not an outflow of violent energy, but a sign that a power was being forcibly restrained, condensed, and redirected.
The dark red power of greed no longer boiled, but flowed slowly around him, exuding a heavy and dangerous sense of stability.
"What do we do?" Chang Lei asked succinctly, his bloodshot eyes locking onto Tang Zijun. "This broken door panel is incredibly hard, and the 'lumps' inside are still acting up. Should we smash the panel and cut off the lumps, or just slap the door and frame together?"
"The barrier is an extension of the singularity's self-protective rules. Brute force will only stimulate it to contract its defenses, and may even trigger a more violent spacetime collapse," Tang Zijun said calmly, wisps of spacetime energy swirling around her, like weaving an invisible net, quietly attaching to the barrier's surface, sensing its subtle rhythm. "It refuses our entry," but perhaps... we can utilize its property of "isolating the inside from the outside."
He looked at Chang Lei, their eyes meeting to convey their plan.
"We don't need to go in; what we need to do is stitch up."
Tang Zijun pointed to the boundary between the barrier and the surrounding turbulent spacetime currents, where the energy conflict was most intense, and spacetime was torn apart with countless tiny wounds flowing with filthy energy.
"Use the power of your greed as the glue to bind the spacetime matrix," forcibly mending these cracks and blocking the exchange of energy between the inside and outside. At the same time, I will use the power of spacetime as a soldering iron to seal along the edges of the cracks, forcibly welding the chaotic spacetime structure back to a relatively stable state, advancing layer by layer from the outside in, ultimately completely enveloping, isolating, and suppressing this source of infection.
Chang Lei narrowed his bloodshot eyes, roughly understanding Tang Zijun's intentions.
Instead of directly attacking the core, they started from the periphery, cutting off its energy source and sealing it with powerful forces of order. In a sense, this is somewhat similar to the sealing of the God of Mirror Devouring Greed.
"Hmph, patching cracks in the wall is a job, but..." Chang Lei sneered. "...it's better than watching it ooze pus."